Hacker Extraordinaire
by thedogdelusion
Summary: Frank Pritchard is stalked by an enemy from his past.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This was originally posted on AO3, but I never uploaded it here because I'm a lazy dingdong. My apologies.

* * *

_Bullets rang out as Nucl3arsnake took cover behind a toppled vending machine._

_Armed only with his trusty laptop, the roguishly handsome hacker hunched over the keyboard, typing with the speed of a gatling gun. Nearby, a gang of terrorists drew nearer, their position defended by an intimidating cluster of ceiling-mounted turrets. Cornered and outnumbered, a lesser man might have given up, accepting his death in a shower of bullets and burst soda cans. But not Nucl3arsnake._

_"We're gonna get you!" shouted one of the gunmen, just feet away from the hacker's hiding place._

_"Ha!" said Nucl3arsnake, a cigarette dangling from his smirking lips. "Taking _me_ down would require brains!"_

_With one last keystroke, Nucl3arsnake's cybersecurity hack went live. The turrets stopped shooting in his direction and turned on the terrorists. Shouts of confusion filled the warehouse, only to be replaced with howls of terror. In a blaze of gunfire, the terrorists were torn to bloody shreds._

_Within seconds, the turrets powered down, filling the abandoned warehouse with a ringing silence. Nucl3arsnake chanced a look over the vending machine, and saw the terrorists' motionless bodies tossed about like the world's goriest salad. The turrets chirped, registering his presence as a friendly one. He gave himself a satisfied smirk, and wiped a small amount of sweat from his otherwise clean forehead._

_"Oh, Nucl3arsnake!" came a female voice. Nucl3arsnake looked in the voice's direction to see the president's beautiful daughter rushing toward him. "You did it! You saved me!" Her deep brown eyes cut through Nucl3arsnake's stoic heart like a virtual knife through cyber-butter._

_"All in a day's work, baby," said Nucl3arsnake in a deep, masculine voice. He stood up, flicking away his cigarette, and stepped around the vending machine._

_"I'm so glad you showed up!" she said, throwing her arms around him. "After that useless ex-cop was too stupid to even find the entrance to the warehouse! Oh, Nucl3arsnake! How can I ever repay you?"_

_"I can think of something," Nucl3arsnake said, with a sly lift of the eyebrow._

_"Ooh, Snakey!" the president's daughter squealed. She leaned in closer to him, parting her glossy lips-_

An urgent beeping sound interrupted Frank Pritchard.

He looked up from his work, a script revision for what he hoped would be the pilot episode of _Nucl3arsnake: Hacker Extraordinaire_. He had been so engrossed in his writing that he felt momentarily confused, wondering why he was sitting in his home office, and not in an abandoned warehouse. The clock on his computer screen read 11:42pm.

Rubbing his eyes, he swiveled his chair around. His home office was spacious, with electronics, figurines, and old food wrappers cluttering nearly every surface. The familiar sight jolted him back to reality, more effectively than the blaring alarm. The sound, he realized, was coming from the apartment's security console.

Pritchard lived in a secure, upscale apartment building, not far from Sarif Industries. He chose it not only for its convenient location, but also because it was the only one he'd been able to find with a landlord who tolerated his incredibly sophisticated and comprehensive security system. He liked to say that if anyone within a 10 mile radius even _thought_ about entering his apartment, he'd know.

He approached the console and logged in, shutting off the alarm. Built into the wall next to the apartment's front door, the console (which Pritchard had designed, programmed, and constructed himself) outwardly consisted of a simple keyboard and monitor. Despite its basic appearance, however, it served as the command center for his home security system, tracking all of the surveillance camera feeds and motion sensors installed throughout his apartment. The warning that flashed across the screen told him that the motion sensor installed outside his front door had detected movement.

He called up the surveillance feeds, though he didn't expect to see much. Pritchard rarely received visitors, and all the neighbors on his floor knew better than to approach his apartment unannounced. The last time the alarm had gone off, it turned out to have been a loose Golden Retriever belonging to the woman who lived three doors down from him. (He seemed to remember calling the woman who owned the dog a "stupid slack-jawed cow.") He figured the intrusion would be something of that nature – a loose animal, an ignorant new neighbor, or an obnoxious Mormon.

What he didn't expect to see was nothing.

He watched the recorded footage, then rewound it and watched it several more times to be certain. All he saw was an empty front doorstep. He checked the file's time stamp, then verified that the console's internal clock was correct. He enhanced the footage and enabled the infrared layer to see if someone had been using a cloaking augmentation, which turned up nothing.

Confused, he unlocked his front door and poked his head out. The hallway was empty, save for his next-door neighbor unlocking her front door.

"Evening," she said to him.

Pritchard glared at her and slammed the door.

Not wanting to take any chances, he decided to search his apartment. He checked all of the obvious hiding places: under his bed, in the closets, in the air vents. Next, he looked behind the shower curtain, in the cabinets, even inside the refrigerator.

Pritchard never thought of his borderline paranoia as irrational. To an anti-augmentation terrorist trying to hack Sarif Industries' computer system, Pritchard was the gatekeeper. He knew that there were plenty of neo-Luddite extremists willing to kill for the knowledge that he possessed. This simple fact, so obvious to Pritchard but apparently lost on his dim-witted and lazy subordinates, made him feel justified in looking for threats in strange places.

After his search turned up nothing, Pritchard returned to his home office. As much as he hated to admit it, the only possible explanation for the false alarm had to be a malfunction of some kind, likely a programming error.

Deciding to inspect the coding, he sat back down at his computer. He flicked the mouse to dismiss the screensaver of bikini-clad anime girls that had popped up during his search.

His breath seized.

On the screen, where his script used to be, was a blurred, pixelated image of a face.

For a moment, Pritchard thought it was a still image. But then he noticed that it shifted in subtle movements – clearly a video, or a feed.

The face seemed to look right at him, despite the distortion of its eyes. From what he could make out, the face appeared to be that of a man on a gray background.

Its mouth, or what could be seen of it, cracked into a malevolent grin.

Pritchard gaped at the screen. Although it was difficult to make out, the sight of the face stirred a half-forgotten memory, something deliberately buried years ago.

"Razor?" Pritchard said, barely above a whisper.

At the sound of Pritchard's voice, the face on the screen began to laugh, the voice modulated to sound like the mechanical grunts of an old computer.

Pritchard sprang up, his chair toppling behind him. He took a step backward, resisting the urge to run as the sickening laughter echoed through the room.

He felt paralyzed, unable to process the fact that a network of his own design had been infiltrated. And if that face on the screen was who he thought it was...

In one swift motion, he stepped forward and yanked the computer's power cord out of the wall. The room went silent with a suddenness of a gunshot.

He ran to his bedroom, heart hammering, and pulled on the first pair of shoes he saw. Flinging his closet door open, he grabbed a jacket and shoved his left arm into a sleeve, forgetting the right sleeve in his haste. With the jacket hanging down the middle of his back, he grabbed his knapsack from its spot in the corner of his bedroom, and hurried out to the hallway.

He shot one last look into his office, still lit by the glow of the lights he left on. Though the power cord lay tossed on the floor like a dead snake, he half expected the computer to be turned on once again, but the screen remained dark.

Without bothering to turn off any lights, Pritchard bolted out of the apartment, the electronic lock clicking into place the moment the door closed behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

As Pritchard fled from his apartment, his first thought was of Sarif Industries. If there had been a breach at his home, on a system of his design, Sarif might have also fallen victim to attack. For the moment, he forced himself to forget about anything else.

Weaving through sparse nighttime traffic on his Blade of Shintaro, he made it to Sarif Industries in record time, nearly crashing into his parking space. Barely a moment after dismounting, he had already sprinted to the elevator, mashing the call button as if it were a stubborn cockroach. He waited all of five seconds before deciding to take the stairs.

He reached his floor, panting from the exertion of running up a single flight of stairs, and half-jogged in the direction of his office. Several employees milled about in the hallway - members of the small nighttime staff.

"Oh, Mr. Pritchard!" said one of them, a man Pritchard dimly recognized as an intern. "I didn't know you were working the night shift tonight. Would you li-"

"Shut up," Pritchard wheezed as hurried past without another glance. Reaching the tech lab, he keyed in the door's entry code, stepped inside, and sat down in front of his computer.

"Come on, come on" he muttered as his computer booted. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the employees in the hallway through the glass walls of his office, talking to one another and occasionally throwing glances at his office. Even in his overwhelmed state, he made a mental note to reprimand them later for their idleness.

As soon as his computer booted, he logged in to check for signs of infiltration. Ordinarily, he would have assigned his underlings to take care of the more tedious aspects of such a task. But this time, he knew he couldn't afford to leave anything overlooked. He watched surveillance footage and combed through lines of code, searching for any indication that network security had been compromised. The focus of his work cleared his head, and he momentarily forgot the panic he had felt earlier.

After several hours of searching, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. In the back of his mind, he felt reassured, but refused to permit himself the luxury of relaxing. He opened his email and began writing a message to the physical security department ("the _other_ security department," as he always called it). He made no mention of the infiltration of his personal network.

When he finished, the time on his computer read 2:58am. He clicked send, then stood up and stretched, his shoulders cracking with a hearty series of pops. He walked to the couch on the other side of his office and shoved a stack of old magazines onto the floor. Deciding it would be safer to stay in a building patrolled by armed security guards, he kicked his shoes off and laid down on the couch.

Small tendrils of fear began to work their way into his brain, but he drifted off to sleep before they could overtake him.

* * *

Pritchard awoke to the sound of his office door opening. Rolling over and blinking his eyes to refocus, he saw Adam Jensen standing over him, a quizzical look on the part of his face that wasn't hidden by sunglasses.

"What do _you_ want?" Pritchard said, sitting up and yawning.

"I just read your security proposals," said Jensen, holding up a tablet in his hand. "We need to go over them."

"What's to go over? I would have thought they were perfectly understandable, even for someone like you."

Jensen read Pritchard's email from the tablet. "'Increased surveillance of all data coming in and out of Sarif Industries. Updated background checks on all personnel working in connection with the cybersecurity department. Personal bodyguard escort to and from my home.' You know Pritchard, the first one almost sounded sane. But what do you need this other stuff for?"

"That's none of your concern, Jensen." Pritchard stood up and stretched. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get some coffee."

Jensen stood in front of the door. "I can't approve of these proposals until I get some more information from you."

Pritchard looked at him with undisguised contempt. "Look, Jensen. I know that you're in charge of the more meat-headed aspects of the company's security, but that doesn't mean I need your personal approval for every order I make."

"I know it doesn't, _Francis_. But if there's been some kind of security breach, I need to know about it."

"There's been no breach. And as long as I'm around, there never will be."

"So what's with the proposals?"

"It's nothing!" said Pritchard, beginning to lose patience. "It's strictly a personal matter. Now step aside, Jensen."

"No. I'm not doing anything for you until you tell me what's going on." Jensen maneuvered himself to block Pritchard's exit.

"Then I'll go straight to Sarif himself!"

"Pritchard, you sound like a bratty kid," said Jensen, crossing his arms. "As funny as it is to watch you throw tantrums, I'm not doing this to piss you off. I want to help you, but you've got to work with me here."

Pritchard frowned, stung by the remark. He stopped trying to get past Jensen and stood silently, waiting for him to continue.

"I need to know what kind of threat we're dealing with," said Jensen. "So if you're really interested in keeping yourself and the company safe, then I'd suggest you tell me exactly what's going on. Don't forget that I'm the one who has to coordinate your bodyguard escort. _If_ I approve it, that is."

Pritchard glared at him. He hated the idea of Jensen knowing anything even remotely personal about him. But the logical part of his brain, the part that inevitably cut through everything else, took control. "Alright, fine," he grumbled. "Sit down." As Jensen crossed the office to the couch, Pritchard closed the office door.

"So what's this all about?" asked Jensen, taking a seat.

Pritchard remained standing. He hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath, then began. "Before I started working at Sarif Industries, I was involved in a, well, sort of a gang."

Jensen made a sound that sounded like a cross between a cough and a snicker. "You? In a gang?"

"Or a collective, if you wish to call it that," said Pritchard. "It was a collective of hackers. We called ourselves the Dirtnap Deckers."

Jensen tried unsuccessfully to hide his smirk by placing a hand over his mouth, in a look of faux-concentration.

"Oh, shut up!" said Pritchard. "Do you want me to tell you or not?"

"Yeah, sorry. Go ahead." Jensen forced his face back into a look of seriousness.

"It's not like _I_ came up with the name. Anyway, we mostly dealt with information retrieval. If a client needed information from a company or individual, and couldn't get it by legal means, then they came to us."

"Are these the people you were working with when you got arrested?"

Pritchard's eyes bulged in shock. "What?! How do you know about that?"

"I'm head of security. I have access to the background checks of _every_ Sarif employee. Minus Mr. Sarif himself, of course."

"And why were you looking at-...nevermind." Pritchard sighed in exasperation. "Yes, they were the ones. Several Deckers, myself included, attempted to access a network belonging to the Leung Corporation."

"Jesus, Pritchard. What made you think you could mess with a company as powerful as Leung?"

"_I_ could have pulled it off, had some of my fellow hackers not been so completely incompetent. I suppose that's what I got for relying on people so embarrassingly beneath my skill level. But yes, we were unsuccessful. There were five of us, three of whom were supposed to act as cyber-lookouts, scanning for detections. Two people did the actual hacking: myself, and another experienced hacker who called himself Razor. We actually managed to infiltrate their network and acquire the information we were looking for. But we failed to realize that we had been detected, giving away not only our presence, by our physical locations."

"So you guys got caught."

"Well, _obviously_."

"I'm curious," said Jensen, brow creased. "How did you get a job like this with a past like that?"

"David Sarif has a lot of connections, as you know. He's old friends with Florence Leung, which is how he found out about me – after my arrest, of course. At the time, Leung's network was one of the most secure in the nation. Naturally, a lot of interest was generated in my skills. David pulled some strings and got me a rather generous plea deal. In exchange for my freedom, I agreed to aid in the investigation of the other hackers, as well as begin working in the cybersecurity department here at Sarif Industries."

Jensen shook his head. "Wow. American justice at work."

"Oh, get off your high horse!" said Pritchard, bristling. "As precious as your idealism is, I can assure you that more good than bad has come out of this arrangement, and not just for myself. Despite what you may believe about hackers, we're not criminals by trade. Anything illegal I may have done in the past was not intended to sow havoc, but to test my own skills. Managing Sarif's cybersecurity has proven a more than adequate challenge for someone of my talents. David trusted me from the start, and he was right to do so."

"If you say so. But I'm beginning to see why you need protection. You stabbed your old 'gang' in the back."

"They would have gotten caught sooner or later. Most of them didn't know how to cover their tracks like I did. That's the whole reason the Leung job fell apart."

"So are they in jail?"

"Not at the moment. The three lookouts did some time, but were ultimately charged as mere accomplices, never skilled enough to do any real harm. They each served a year."

"And 'Razor'?" Jensen did air-quotes as he said the name.

"He was never caught."

"And you think he's coming after you?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"Tell me more about him."

"He was an exceptionally talented hacker, nearly as good as me. We worked together quite a lot, and I was one of the first to join the collective after he founded it. But I can't say that we were ever friends. I'm sure he resented my superior skills. He had an extremely short temper. At times, he was reckless and irrational. I think it was his impatience that led to us being detected. I hadn't received any communication from him since he went on the run, until last night."

"How did he get in touch with you?"

Pritchard related the events of the previous night.

"_You_ got hacked?" asked Jensen.

"There's no need to rub it in," Pritchard muttered.

"And you're sure it was him?"

"Definitely sure. I know the face I saw on my screen. It was more than just an avatar to him. It was his calling card. He always left that particular image for his hacking victims. Now are you going to help me or not?"

Jensen considered for a moment. "Alright, I'll assign a security detail to escort you back to your apartment later tonight. But whether or not this is permanent is another matter."

"Fine, whatever," said Pritchard. "Can I go now? Or do you need my entire life story?"

Jensen typed something on the tablet. "You'll hear from the security department by the end of the day," he said, ignoring Pritchard. He put the tablet in his trench coat's inner pocket and stood up to leave. "Try not to get into trouble before then." Jensen was out the door before Pritchard could retort.

* * *

Pritchard's shift ended at 6:00, but he stayed until 9:30, testing new security protocols and emailing long lists of new instructions to his subordinates. The inadequate amount of sleep from the night before was beginning to catch up with him as he walked down the stairs to the underground parking structure.

When he reached his cycle, he saw two uniformed security guards standing next to it. One was leaning against a wall, his arms folded and a sour look on his face; the other was pacing around, smoking a cigarette.

"I assume the two of you will be following me to my apartment?" Pritchard said, approaching the two men.

"Yeah," said the pacing guard, tossing his cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with his boot. "We'll be right behind you."

"Very well," said Pritchard. He mounted his cycle, waited for the two guards to enter a security vehicle parked nearby, and sped off without another word.

The evening rush hour had already lightened up, and Pritchard sped easily through the neon-lit streets back to his apartment. The guards driving behind him kept a close tail, keeping up with him as he weaved in and out of traffic.

As he approached his apartment building, Pritchard tapped a button on his handlebar, opening the steel security gate to the parking structure. With several more taps, Pritchard gave authorization for the guards behind him. Both vehicles entered, and the security gate slammed shut behind them.

He drove over to his parking space and shut down his cycle. The security vehicle didn't search for a vacant spot, but stopped right behind him. The two guards got out of the car.

"I let you in the security gate because your tires would have been shredded without proper authorization," Pritchard said. "But I don't need you to walk me up to my apartment. Goodnight." He began to walk toward the elevator.

"Hang on a sec," said one of the guards, the one who had been leaning on the wall earlier. "We were instructed to walk you to your door."

"What is this, a date?" said Pritchard, frowning at the two.

"Jensen's orders," said the other guard. He held up his left hand, indicating the subdermal chip implanted in the palms of all Sarif security personnel. If official orders were disobeyed, the security department knew immediately.

"Oh, very well," said Pritchard, annoyed. "But tell Jensen I don't need my hand held."

"Yes, sir," said the guard.

The three of them entered the elevator. Pritchard hit the button for his floor, and the elevator began its ascent to the 12th level.

He had already formulated a plan for what he'd do once he re-entered his apartment. In his knapsack was a hard drive containing an updated version of his security software. It was a simple patch job, but it needed to be installed directly, rather than downloaded from the Sarif network. He felt reasonably certain that he had plugged all of the potential loopholes in the firewall.

As the elevator passed the third floor, Pritchard felt a sudden, sharp pain in the side of his neck. He whipped around to face the guard standing behind him, and caught a split-second glimpse of a syringe.

"What th-" Pritchard began to splutter. A hand closed over his mouth before he could get another word out. He reached up and tried to pry the hand off of his face. His muscles, negligible as they were, felt even weaker than usual. He scraped at the hand restraining him, the other guard laughing at the obvious futility of his struggle.

Pritchard jerked his head back, dislodging the hand over his mouth by a fraction of an inch, and sunk his teeth into the man's fingers. The guard restraining him let out a howl of pain and retracted his injured hand.

"Shit!" yelled the other guard, still standing behind Pritchard. He was shoved aside as the guard reached out to hit the emergency button, bringing the elevator to a jerky halt.

The guard with the bitten hand reached out once more, this time holding Pritchard's arms behind his back. Pritchard struggled, but his muscles felt weak and rubbery. A dreamlike haze enveloped his mind, making it difficult to focus. He tried to stomp on the guard's foot, but his sudden lack of muscular coordination made him slip. He slumped down onto the floor, powerless to remain standing.

"Fucker," Pritchard dimly heard the guard say as he relinquished his grip at last.

Pritchard looked up to see a dark vision of the two guards hovering over him, but could keep his eyes open no longer. With his mind still screaming in protest, he blacked out.


	3. Chapter 3

A vague series of disjointed images flickered in Pritchard's mind. Through a chemical haze, he saw flashes of light and dark, heard agitated voices. He thought he felt another injection at one point, jabbed into his neck as he struggled to open his eyes.

When he awoke, he had no concept of how much time had passed. It couldn't have been long, but it felt like it had been days. With his eyes still closed, he lay motionless on his side, unsure if any of it had happened at all. He reached out, hoping to find his phone charging on his nightstand as always, but his groping fingers found nothing but the surface he was lying on.

Unable to fool himself any longer, he opened his eyes. He was lying on carpet, though it was encrusted with what felt like years worth of dust. Through blurry vision, he craned his head up enough to see a barred window through which dull moonlight struggled to shine. From his position, he couldn't tell how large the room was, but he could make out the indistinct silhouette of furniture next to the wall in front of him.

He tried to sit up, but only succeeded in raising himself several inches off the ground before a splitting headache forced him back down. He let out a groan, partially from the pain, and partially from the realization that his face had been lying in a puddle of his own drool.

"I see you're awake."

Pritchard started when he heard the voice emanating from an unseen PA speaker. The voice was modulated, just like the one he had heard coming from his computer.

Lacking the energy to stand up, and doubting whether Razor would be able to hear anything he said, Pritchard rolled over onto his back and kept listening.

"I'm not going to sit here and throw snappy one-liners at you like some action movie villain," the voice went on. "I'm going to give it to you straight. You fucked me over, so now you're going to die. It won't be clean, and it certainly won't be quick. I'll give you some time to think that over until I get there. Goodbye."

Pritchard remained supine, staring at the cracked ceiling. The security guards who had kidnapped him worked for Razor, that much was obvious. How they had managed to infiltrate Sarif Industries and be assigned to bodyguard duty was less clear. Perhaps the security database had been hacked, or the guards' background checks had been forged during the hiring process. Maybe someone at the corporate level was working as a mole. His mind raced through the possibilities, analyzing and ranking them in terms of plausibility. He nearly forgot about his entire predicament, so focused was he on his assessment, when a stab of pain in his head jolted him back to the present. He'd never figure out what happened if he didn't even survive the night.

He stood up, his legs unsteady. Though his head throbbed, he gritted his teeth and ignored it. Once upright, he began to teeter sideways, but caught himself against the wall. He leaned on it and rested for a moment, already out of breath from the effort. Without thinking, he raised a finger to his right earlobe, hoping to find his infolink in place, but it was gone. _Of course_, he thought.

He rubbed his eyes, chest heaving, trying to maintain his calm. Turning away from the wall, he found that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He gave the room a closer look while he caught his breath. It looked like a small, cramped office, with a large metal desk taking up most of the opposite wall, a toppled filing cabinet, and some old three-ring binders scattered around the floor. The air of abandonment and decay overwhelmed him; he wouldn't have been surprised if it had felt that way even when the building was still in use.

To his side was a solid metal door in an unexpected state of repair. He reached out to push the handle, but was unsurprised to find it locked tight.

Almost as soon as his hand touched the door, he heard the faint sound of voices approaching from the other side. He thought he recognized them as the two guards.

Pritchard knew he had to take action if he wanted to survive the night, but had no idea what he could do against two bulked up, meat-headed thugs. Even if he hadn't been recovering from whatever drug was shot into his neck, physical force was out of the question. The only advantage he had over them was his superior intellect, but that was worthless against bullets. Even as his panic level rose, the thought that came to him filled him with self-loathing: what would Jensen do?

He recalled his time spent talking Jensen through his missions, sitting through hours of downtime as Jensen crouched motionless and silent behind a crate or a potted ficus. Jensen had somehow managed to pull it off every time, though Pritchard often wondered (out loud) how subtle a trench-coated asshole with a gallon of gel in his hair could possibly be.

It was a stupid, desperate idea, but with time running out, he had no choice. Without another thought, he dove under the desk.

He sat with his knees hugged to his chest, feeling equal parts scared and foolish. There was no way this could work in such a small room. The guards would see him the moment they opened the door. He began looking around for anything that might serve as a weapon - an old stapler or a broken chair leg, anything. He wanted to look through the desk drawers, but the guards' voices were just outside the door now.

Ideas ran through his head, each one more panic-addled and improbable than the last. Maybe he could create a barricade with the desk, or pretend to have a seizure, or stall the guards with a series of riddles, or...

It was hopeless. He hated to give up, but he saw no other alternative. Putting his head down on his knees, he sat still and waited for the guards to come in and do whatever it was Razor had ordered them to do. He stared at the wall, bitter that it might be the last thing he ever looked at.

Then he saw it. He squinted his eyes, hardly daring to believe it. On the wall next to him, previously obscured by the desk, was an air vent.

"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered.

Jensen's habit of crawling through air ducts always struck Pritchard as ludicrous. Somehow, Jensen always managed to get exactly where he needed to go, almost as if the air ducts were designed for covert movement instead of air flow. Given his present circumstances, however, Pritchard had no reason to believe that he would be so lucky. There was no telling where the air ducts might lead in such an old and dilapidated building. Straight into a furnace, or a nest of rats, or god knew what else. But as he heard a key unlocking the door, his choice was made for him. He unlatched the rusted air vent, making a disconcerting amount of noise in the process, and crawled in head-first.

There was only enough room for him to lie flat; evidently, air ducts the size of actual crawl spaces were only a feature of Detroit's newer buildings. Inching like an earthworm, Pritchard crawled into the ventilation shaft. His elbows and knees bumped into the grimy walls of the air duct, sending sharp jabs of pain into his joints. Behind him, he heard the receding voices of the guards, shouting in anger and alarm.

He crawled for the space of several rooms and stopped to catch his breath. There was no sound behind him of guards following. They had either been too stupid to realize how he had escaped, or had some other tactic of catching him besides direct pursuit.

He was exhausted, coated with grime, and in pain all over. If he had believed that help was on the way, he would have stayed in the vent until it arrived. As it was, his GPL implant might have aided in a rescue effort, but if no one thought to look for him, he might be dead before the night was out.

He had no choice but to continue on, crawling through the filthy air duct several more feet until he reached another vent. He paused to listen. From what he could tell, the room on the other side of the vent was silent. He pushed the vent cover, giving it an extra hit when the layers of rust caused some resistance, and crawled out.

It was another office, just as filthy as the first. The one difference was the presence of a soft glow coming from a corner on the opposite side of the room. Standing up and wiping his face with his sleeve, he crossed the room to investigate, and smiled for the first time in (now that he thought of it) almost a week. It was a tablet, a fairly cheap and low-tech one, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing. To top it off, someone had left a half-eaten chocolate bar on the table next to it. He stuffed the entire bar in his mouth, not realizing how hungry he had been.

He picked up the tablet, his cheeks stuffed like a starving chipmunk, and stared at the log-in screen. He knew he could crack the password in less than 10 seconds, but he also figured that the network Razor had undoubtedly set up would register his log-in immediately, giving away his position. He thought about how to log in invisibly. Given what he knew about this particular brand of tablet, and what type of network likely to be in use, and what he knew about the network security likely to be employed by Razor...

If he knew Razor, this had to be a trap.

No sooner had the thought occurred to him when he heard the sound of running footsteps approaching from outside. The door flew open before Pritchard could make another dive for the air vent. It was just one guard this time, the one who had been smoking a cigarette before. A flashlight attached to the guard's vest illuminated the room, temporarily blinding Pritchard. In the guard's hands was a combat rifle, pointed squarely at Pritchard's chest.

Seeing no other course of action, Pritchard dropped the tablet and put his hands in the air.

"Freeze, fucker!" the guard yelled.

Pritchard swallowed the last of the chocolate bar he had still been chewing and rolled his eyes. "I've clearly already frozen," he said. "Or did you mean that literally?"

The guard frowned. "Huh?"

"Nevermind. I suppose I'll just have to follow you now."

"Damn right you will, asshole!"

Pritchard had spent much of his childhood and teenage years being picked on by his bulkier, smaller-brained peers. During that time, he'd expended most of his energy in avoiding direct conflict. When he actually bothered to show up for school, he knew all of the lesser-known paths to his classes. He even thought he might have broken a record for the longest time spent hiding in a toilet stall. In Pritchard's experience, it was far easier to evade bullies than to open a locker from the inside. But when his tormentors caught up with him, as they had a bad habit of doing, Pritchard had learned to stay calm, resigning himself to his pain and humiliation with an almost Buddha-like acceptance. It was this sudden clear-headedness in crisis that served him so well on the job, and it kicked in now.

The guard looked just like one of Pritchard's many childhood bullies: bulky and mean, with cat turds where his brain ought to be. He was still wearing the Sarif security bulletproof vest, but the uniform cap he was wearing before had been discarded. With the guard's head bare, Pritchard could see an infolink sticking out of his ear.

"Very well, lead on," said Pritchard. He had to come up with a way to get that infolink, but in the meantime, he tried not to stare at the guard's ear.

The guard snatched the tablet out of Pritchard's hand. He jerked his head, indicating that Pritchard should walk in front of him. Hands still raised, Pritchard walked out of the room, combat rifle jabbing into his back.

Outside of the room was a hallway, as abandoned-looking as everything else Pritchard had seen that night. Closed doors lined the walls, each of them presumably with an dingy, forgotten office on the other side.

"Ow!" Pritchard said, after a particularly sharp jab to his back. "Is that really necessary?"

"Another word out of you, and I'll knock your ass out," said the guard, with another jab of the rifle. "Razor said he wanted you alive. Didn't say anything about you needing all your teeth, though."

Pritchard shut his mouth, thinking fast. If he couldn't somehow talk this guy into giving up his infolink, he'd have to try something else.

The guard directed him to the end of the hallway, to a closed door leading to a stairwell.

"Open the door," said the guard. "But keep your other hand where I can see it."

Pritchard rolled his eyes and lowered his right hand, placing it on the door handle. A plan began to form in his head. He pressed the door's push handle, but not enough to actually open it. He feigned a struggle with it, making a show of jiggling the handle and grunting in frustration. "It's stuck," he said, returning his hand to its raised position.

"What?" said the guard. "God damnit. Get the hell out the way." He shoved Pritchard aside and, without checking to see how stuck the door actually was, hunkered down like a charging football player and bashed the door with his shoulder.

With an enormous crash, the door flew open. As the guard stumbled onto the stairway landing, Pritchard saw his opportunity. He made his move before the guard had a chance to reorient himself. Rushing forward, Pritchard shoved the guard down the stairs.

Not expecting the attack, the guard had no time to reach out for the railing. He fell face-first down the dark stairwell, the beam of the flashlight illuminating his violent descent. Pritchard watched in astonishment; he hadn't been sure that the guard would actually fall. The guard crashed down the stairs like a rag doll, hitting the wall on the floor below with a sickening thud.

Pritchard stood at the top of the stairwell and looked down at the guard. The flashlight on his vest still shone, casting his crumpled body in a eerie light. Pritchard crept down the stairs, hoping that no one had heard the crashes and yells of the guard. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, he inspected the unconscious guard. He was still breathing, but his face was streaked with blood. He turned the guard's head to find the infolink, mercifully undamaged. Plucking the infolink from out of the guard's ear, he began connecting to Jensen's frequency.


	4. Chapter 4

Pritchard waited as the infolink connected, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. His eyes darted between the unconscious guard and the length of the hallway. He was ready to take off running at the slightest sound or movement.

"Jensen?" Pritchard whispered as soon as he heard the connection establish. "Damnit Jensen, are you there?"

"Where else would I be?" came Jensen's groggy voice from the other end. "My infolink is attached to my skull, remember?" He yawned, somewhat dramatically. "What do you want? It's after midnight."

"I've been kidnapped."

"What?!" Jensen shouted, suddenly alert. "By who?"

"By Razor, with the help of your security escort."

"But-"

"I know you had nothing to do with it," said Pritchard, anticipating Jensen's response. "But we'll talk about that later. The first thing you need to do is get to my office and log in to my computer."

"Excuse me?" said Jensen. "The first thing I need to do is-"

"Didn't you hear me?" interrupted Pritchard. "Sarif Industries has been infiltrated by someone who wants me dead. Whatever protocol we might have followed is now worthless. And before you say it, don't bother with the police, either."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't trust them. Now get to my office and contact me once you're there."

"But...damnit, Pritchard." Jensen sighed, his confusion and frustration plain. Pritchard could practically hear the gears turning in Jensen's head. He had always been annoyed with Jensen's by-the-book methods. Even if he broke the law while on missions, even killing people to obtain his objectives, it was always done on Sarif's orders. Jensen was like a particularly violent lap dog, Pritchard often thought.

"Listen," Pritchard said, forcing himself to remain calm. "I hate myself for asking this, but can you please, _please_ just help me? I don't want to get David involved, if we can avoid it. Doing this through official channels will only complicate things. I can find out where they've taken me and get out of here, but only with your help. So how about it? Take orders from me, or face David after he finds out that you somehow managed to assign me a security detail comprised of moles?"

There were several moments of silence from Jensen's end. Pritchard waited, formulating more arguments in his head, many of them dumbed down significantly.

"Tell me what to do," Jensen said, finally.

Pritchard felt a rush of relief, amazed that Jensen had agreed with him so readily. "Alright. Where are you right now?"

"At my apartment."

"How fast can you get to my office?"

"Without an airlift?"

"Yes. The fewer people we can involve in this, the better."

"Ten minutes."

"Fine. Contact me again once you've reached my office. Pritchard out." He cut the connection.

Pritchard looked down at the guard. Just inches from his motionless body was a combat rifle. He recognized it as the one issued to all of the security guards at Sarif Industries. He knew how to use it in theory, but had never so much as touched one before.

He picked up the gun and the flashlight, and turned around to look at his surroundings. The hallway was pitch dark; everything outside of the flashlight's beam was completely obscured. The walls were lined with doors, presumably leading to offices, or something similar. He approached one and reached out to try one of the doorknobs, but then hesitated. Razor, or his henchmen, had somehow known to set a trap in a seemingly random office. He couldn't take that chance again.

He walked along the hallway in search of a suitable hiding place, but all he could see were doors. The peeling paint lining the walls reminded him uncomfortably of some kind of nightmarish delusion he half-remembered. With each step, he grew more and more anxious. The building was creepy in the extreme, and would have unnerved him even if he weren't being pursued by Razor.

Powering through his fear, he continued on until he found a door that was partially open. He didn't like the look of it. A single door, conveniently unlocked and ajar amidst a full wall of locked ones, stank of another trap. He was about to continue walking, when he heard what sounded like distant footsteps, coming from where he had left the guard. Seeing no other choice, he stowed the flashlight in his pocket and opened the door a few inches wider, slipping inside.

He had been expecting another office. As soon as he stepped inside, however, he heard an almighty crash. Compounding the noise, he tripped over something, sending him sprawling face-first into the darkness, whereupon he slammed into the wall directly opposite the door. It was a janitor's closet.

Pritchard swore at himself silently. He had never been physically graceful. Even when fully awake and caffeinated, he was still physically prone to stupid accidents, including one memorable occasion when he had somehow managed to spill his energy drink all over David's keyboard while giving him a demonstration of the new surveillance software.

He decided to stand still, frozen with one leg bent at a strange angle, in the hopes that anyone who might have heard the racket would move on. He still clutched the rifle in one hand, mentally rehearsing the steps to operate it, if it came to that.

Several minutes passed by. Just when his awkward position was beginning to hurt, he heard the sound of someone connecting to the infolink.

"Okay, I'm here," said Jensen. "What do I do?"

"Log in to my computer," Pritchard whispered. "The password is 'nucl3arsnake,' with a 3 for the first E."

A moment. "I'm in."

"Alright. I need you to access the GPL interface. It's in the same location as it is on your computer."

"GPL? I could have done that from my apartment."

"Not with mine, you couldn't. After the scientists were kidnapped, I started working on upgrading the tech. Wouldn't want them to be remotely disabled again. But I haven't perfected it yet, so I've been testing it using only _my_ GPL."

"God damnit, Pritchard!" Pritchard could hear Jensen slam the desk with his fist. "Were you planning on telling anyone, or were you waiting to get kidnapped to test it out?"

"It slipped my mind. I must have been caught up in all my other duties - chief among them, protecting the company from a hundred or so attempts at cyber attacks per day! But forget about that for now. What do you see?"

"Are you sure you tested this properly?"

"Yes, you imbecile!" Pritchard hissed. "Why do you think I'd leave something this important untested?"

"Because I'm looking at your GPL finder right now, and it's offline."

"What?!" Pritchard yelled, then immediately clapped a hand over his mouth. "What do you mean?" he said, more quietly.

"Wait a second," said Jensen. "It's doing something. I think it's coming back online."

"Oh, thank god," said Pritchard, breathing a sigh of relief. "What does it say?"

Jensen didn't answer.

"Uh, hello? Jensen? If I could _avoid_ dying here tonight, that would be wonderful."

"It says, 'He's mine, Adam.'"

"Shit," muttered Pritchard. "This is bad."

"I know it is, but just stay calm," said Jensen.

"I am calm! Do I sound like I'm not calm? Do I sound like a hysterical mess?!"

"_Now_ you do. Just shut up and listen. Your GPL finder is down, and it doesn't look like it's coming back. That means that if I'm going to find you, we're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way."

"Meaning?"

"With our eyes and ears. And since I don't know who we can trust on the security team, _I'm_ going to have to be the one to get you out of there."

"And how do you propose to do that?"

"The first thing you need to do is try to figure out where you are. If your GPL is disabled, then you need to find some kind of landmark that I can reference. Are there any windows nearby?"

"I'm in a broom closet, Jensen. Of course there aren't any windows."

"Then get _out_ of the broom closet, Francis."

"Are you sure that's advisable?" said Pritchard, eying the door.

"It's the only way," said Jensen, sounding weary. "Listen. Just find a window, look outside, and tell me what you see. You can see the Sarif building from nearly anywhere in Detroit, so if you're still in the area, I'll have a point of reference. When I've figured out where you are, you'll be able to go back to your broom closet and sit tight while I come for you. But until then, you have to do what I say. There's no other choice at this point."

"Alright, alright, fine. Just give me a moment." Taking a deep breath, Pritchard stepped over the pile of janitorial supplies he had tripped over. He opened the door a crack and poked his head out, listening. The hallway was silent and still, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. He hesitated for a moment longer, a split-second of panic coursing through him, then crept out.

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so he left the flashlight off. Around a corner just up ahead, he thought he saw a dull glow, likely the moon shining through windows.

The floor was carpeted, or at least had been at one point, but was now so thick with years of accumulated dust and grime that his footfalls were silent. He crept along the hallway towards the source of the light, his back to the wall like a child pretending the floor was made of lava.

All he knew about stealth he had learned from movies, video games, and observing Jensen's behavior while remotely assisting him on missions. The relative safety he had felt while hiding in the closet had vanished, replaced with a creeping sense of dread. For a brief, ridiculous moment, he considered crouching low to the ground and placing a cardboard box over himself for extra camouflage. He shook his head, trying to stay focused - and sane.

He turned the corner and saw a set of windows spanning the length of the far wall. He stopped for a moment to listen. He knew he had heard something before, but he couldn't be sure if it had been a guard, or just the sound of the old building settling. With every footstep, he felt his fear rising. He was exposed and vulnerable, likely being monitored by an unseen camera or motion detector. Around any corner, behind any door, crouched in any patch of darkness could be another goon, just waiting for Pritchard to get close enough. He had no idea whether he was inching closer to safety, or death. As he approached within feet of the windows, a droning monologue circled through his head, getting louder with each step: _Just a little closer, just a little closer, just a little clo-_

"See anything?" asked Jensen.

"Jesus!" yelled Pritchard. He stopped, startled at how loud he had yelled, and listened for the sound of approaching gunmen, but heard nothing. Heart pounding, he rested one hand on the wall to steady himself. "What is your _problem_, Jensen?" he said, back to a whisper.

"Sorry. Just making sure you were still connected."

"Yeah, right," said Pritchard, regaining his composure. He approached one of the grimy windows, wiped some of the dirt from the glass with his sleeve, and peered out. "I see city lights, but not immediately below me. I think I'm in one of the blacked out zones. Which makes sense. This building doesn't look like it's been inhabited in over 20 years."

"Can you see the Sarif building?"

"I'm not sure. Hang on."

It was an old fashioned push-up window, probably unused and unopened even when the building was still occupied. Unlocking the latch, he hooked his fingers underneath the bottom and pulled, but the window didn't budge. He tried again, bending at the knees to try to get some extra strength, but the window remained shut.

"What are you doing?" asked Jensen.

"Opening...the god damn...window!" Pritchard huffed between strained grunts and breaths. He felt a tinge of humiliation, having to audibly struggle with a stubborn window, while Jensen, a practical cyborg who could probably lift a car over his head without getting winded, listened on.

Pritchard stopped for a moment to catch his breath. Then, with one last pull and a muffled roar, the window flew open.

A piercing alarm began to go off.

"Pritchard! What the hell is going on?" yelled Jensen.

"I'm herding a litter of noisy kittens!" Pritchard shouted over the alarm. "What the hell do you _think_ is going on?!"

"Get out of there! Hide!"

"Wait! I can see out the window now!" Pritchard leaned out, giving himself a better vantage point. "I'm on the third floor" he said, estimating his distance from the ground. The surrounding area was completely dark, obviously abandoned. In the near distance, the lit parts of town threw a golden glow onto the derelict buildings. He leaned out further, almost to his waist, scanning the electrified horizon for any landmark he recognized.

"Pritchard, move! They're going to be coming for you!"

"Just hold on!" Hanging onto the sill, he leaned out several inches more and saw the Sarif building, looming over the horizon like an urban lighthouse. "There!" he said. "I see it! I'm north of the Sarif building. North and slightly west. About seven or eight miles from downtown, by the look of it."

"Wait," said Jensen. "Do you know how tall the building is?"

Pritchard gripped the sill and leaned out further, facing upward. "There are about six more stories above me."

Jensen paused for a moment. "I think I know where you are."

"Great," said Pritchard, pulling himself back into the hallway.

"Now get the hell out of there! Move!"

Back indoors, Pritchard could barely hear him over the sound of the alarm. "Alright, I'm going!" he shouted back. He turned around to run back to the broom closet, his heart pounding from a mixture of fear and elation.

From somewhere in the dark, a fist slammed into his face.

He stumbled and fell flat on his back. It took him a moment to register what had happened. He felt the gun being ripped from his hands, which had gone unexpectedly slack. Above him, he saw the other guard, the one who hadn't been shoved down a flight of stairs. The guard reached down and snatched the infolink out of Pritchard's ear. He retreated from view, leaving Pritchard with a blurry, undulating view of the ceiling. For the second time that night, he felt himself losing consciousness. He had barely enough time to swear under his breath before succumbing to darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

Pritchard awoke in a sitting position, his head slumped forward on his chest. His hair, which had long since come untied, hung in curtains around his face. He closed his mouth, which had been hanging open, and began coughing; his were nostrils constricted by congealing blood. His head swam, the ground on which he sat felt unsteady, and his stomach churned as if he were hungover. He tried to bring his hands up to his face, to at least brush the hair out of his eyes, but found that his arms were tied to something behind his back.

Breathing through his mouth, he looked down at the ground upon which he sat. The filth and decay told him that he was still in the same building. Unlike the other rooms he had seen, however, this one was well-lit. A floodlight standing in the corner cast a blinding light in his face. He squinted through it, looking across the room at what appeared to be an ancient boiler. Groping around behind his back, he realized that his hands were tied to pipes coming out of the wall.

After a few moments, his eyes adjusted to the light, and he opened them a little wider. Standing next to the floodlight was a sentry gun, pointed squarely at his chest.

Pritchard groaned, a mixture of anger and resignation numbing his fear.

"You are so predictable, Nuke." Once again, Pritchard heard the eerily modulated voice of Razor coming from an unseen speaker. "I'm sure you thought you had me for a second. What made you think you could get away from me?"

"It's...Frank," said Pritchard, his speech slurred. He spat a wad of blood and saliva onto the dirt floor.

"Um, what?" said Razor, hesitation in his robotic voice.

"I'm not Nucl3arsnake anymore." Pritchard's voice gained strength, his words becoming clearer. "That was in the past. It's just Frank now."

"Is that so?" said Razor with a strange-sounding chuckle. "Then what about those little stories you write?"

Pritchard said nothing. At any other time, he would have been humiliated that his enemy had hacked into his computer and read his scripts. Or he might have given him a boring and pedantic lecture on the importance of creativity in a hacker's life. But with a sentry gun pointed at his subdued body, everything else seemed trivial.

"Do you want to know how I caught you, _Nucl3arsnake_?" Razor went on, putting emphasis on the name. "I was counting on your predictability. You haven't changed a bit since the old days. You did everything you were supposed to. The apartment, the armed escort, even the fucking ventilation shaft. It's all led you to this very spot, under these very circumstances. Do you want to know how I knew?"

Pritchard remained silent, but felt curious in spite of himself.

"Your love of authority," said Razor, without waiting for an answer. "When you thought you were in danger, the first thing you did was run to Sarif's fortress. After that, it was easy. I had already hacked into the security personnel database to get my men in there."

"Am I supposed to believed any of that?"

"I think you do, deep down. You may be a stubborn, arrogant, backstabbing bastard, but you were never lacking in brains. Only _sense_."

"I suppose you think you know exactly what I'm going to do now, right?"

"Of course. You're going to do nothing, Nuke. You're going to sit there and talk big and act like you've got something up your sleeve. You'll make empty threats. You'll pretend that someone knows you're here. You'll try to talk me into believing that I've made a grave mistake in hunting you down." Razor's voice was growing steadily louder, emotion beginning to seep through his calm. "If you think for even a _second_ that you're getting out of this, then you might just be a fucking idiot after all. I'm not letting you get away. Not after what you did to me."

"I don't have to justify myself," said Pritchard, his indignation flaring. "All I did back then was protect myself after you all fucked up and got us caught. I never owed anything to anyone."

"Wrong!" Razor shouted. "We were a family. A fucked up, dysfunctional family who looked out for each other. When one of us got in trouble, the rest of us helped. That was the point. The whole fucking point! And you sold us out the first chance you got!"

"None of you were worth my loyalty!" Pritchard shouted back. He felt his anger rising. If he was going to be ripped to shreds at any moment, he at least wanted to have the last word. "I was by far the most talented. No one could keep up with me. I wasn't going to let someone else's stupidity become _my_ problem."

"It's not even about that," Razor went on. "I've been living on the run since you fucked me over. I can't even go outside anymore."

"Did you ever?" said Pritchard, before he could stop himself.

"Shut up!" Razor shouted. "Just shut up, you fucking asshole!" He stopped talking for a moment. Pritchard heard a strange grinding coming from the speaker, which might have been the distorted sound of Razor breathing heavily. "So predictable," he said a few moments later.

"You're not going to get your life back if you kill me," said Pritchard.

"Are you trying to bargain with me now?"

"It's a simple fact, Razor. How is this unclear to you? If you could set aside your emotions for a moment and _think_, you'd see-"

"You just can't shut up, can you?" Razor interrupted. He sounded feverish now, his voice trembling. "No more of this! This ends now!"

Pritchard froze as he heard the sentry gun revving up.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," he whimpered, screwing his eyes shut.

Seemingly from nowhere, a massive weight plowed into Pritchard, cutting the ropes and shoving him across the room. He was thrown onto his stomach, face planted into the ground. He couldn't see who or what had saved him, but he heard the sound of gunfire, followed by a small explosion.

In the silence that followed, Pritchard heard footsteps approaching him. A pair of cold, metallic hands sliced the rest of the rope from his hands. Flipping over onto his back, he looked up and saw Jensen. Behind him was the smoking wreckage of the sentry gun.

"My god," said Pritchard, his heart still pounding. "You found me."

"Are you hurt?" asked Jensen. He extended a hand to Pritchard, helping him to his feet.

"Let's worry about that later," Pritchard said in a shaky voice. "What do we do now?" He could taste the blood in his mouth. It made him nauseous.

"It would be safer if we got out of here now, but we'd risk letting Razor escape. You're more familiar with this guy's MO, so I'll leave it up to you. Do we stay or go?"

"We can't let him get away," said Pritchard without hesitation.

"Okay," said Jensen. He gave Pritchard a once-over. "You sure you're up to this?"

"I'm touched by your concern, but I'd rather _not_ live the rest of my life in a state of terror, if that's alright with you."

"Fair enough," said Jensen. "Do you have any idea where he is?"

"No. If I had my computer with me, I could trace the signal being emitted by-"

"I got this," Jensen interrupted. He creased his brow in a look of concentration, and began looking around at the walls and ceiling.

Pritchard frowned. He knew that Jensen was helping him, and his augmentations would be instrumental in their escape. But he was far too accustomed to thinking of Jensen as a show-off whenever he did his seeing-through-walls trick.

"Three floors up," said Jensen, eyes locked on a point on the ceiling. "There's someone there. Can't say if it's Razor, but I'm getting a lot of heat readings all around him. Could be computers."

"Then let's go," said Pritchard.

They left the room, with Jensen leading the way. Just outside lay the body of the other guard. Pritchard wasn't sure if he was unconscious or dead, but at the moment, he didn't care.

As they walked, Pritchard was unnerved by the eerie silence of the building. Why wasn't Razor trying to stop them? Surely he knew that he and Jensen were coming for him.

They reached the stairwell and ascended in silence, Jensen waiting on each landing as Pritchard dragged himself up. His body was wracked with pain, and his head throbbed beyond anything he had ever felt before, but he climbed the stairs without complaint.

Once they reached the third floor, Jensen approached the door leading into the hallway, and pointed. Sure enough, a dim glow emanated from one of the offices several doors down.

"What are you planning?" Pritchard whispered.

"I'm going to sneak in and see if I can take him by surprise."

"What should I do?"

"Stay out of sight. In your condition, you'd only get in the way."

Pritchard nearly argued, a knee-jerk reaction, but the pain throbbing in his head kept his mouth shut. He nodded.

"If something happens to me, I want you to run," Jensen continued. "Get the hell out any way you can. Got it?"

"Got it."

Jensen activated his cloaking system, rendering himself nearly invisible. Pritchard could see the subtle shimmer in the air as Jensen silently crept down the hall. After several seconds, Pritchard lost sight of him completely.

Standing alone on the stairway landing, Pritchard strained his ears, listening for any sounds of a struggle. Hearing nothing, he entertained the notion that Jensen had snuck up on Razor, sitting unaware in his fortress of computing equipment, and snapped his neck. If it were him, Pritchard thought, he would have taken Razor out with a syringe of poison to the neck, as payback for what Razor's goons had done to him in that elevator. He might have even had the chance to deliver some kind of scathing remark before Razor lost consciousness. Pritchard always liked poetic justice and snappy one-liners, and never failed to include them in abundance in each of his scripts.

Pritchard gave himself a weak smile, thinking about how he could turn the night's events into a revised version of _Nucl3arsnake: Hacker Extraordinaire_. Maybe this experience would shine through in his writing, and Picus would finally pick up his idea for a TV series. He could picture it now. The episode would begin in the apartment of the dashingly handsome Nucl3arsnake, sitting down at his computer while his supermodel girlfriend dozed in the next room...

He was interrupted from his reverie by the sound of an enormous crash coming from the office down the hall.

"Got you, you bastard!" a strange voice shouted from the room. The voice was no longer filtered through tacky voice-changing software, but Pritchard had no doubt who he was hearing.

Remembering what Jensen had told him, Pritchard turned to run down the stairs, but he stopped himself. He couldn't just leave Jensen alone. When he thought he was going to be killed by that sentry gun, Jensen had jumped in at the last moment, like some kind of well-scripted plot device. Sure, he hated Jensen's guts, but that didn't mean he didn't appreciate the guy. Even if he couldn't help in a fight, but there had to be _something_ he could do.

The sounds of a fight echoed down the hall. Pritchard wondered just how strong Razor could be, if he was seriously competing with Jensen.

Pritchard crept over to the room, painfully conscious of how awkward and useless he was liable to be. If he could just get a look inside the room, he might see something he could use. A makeshift weapon, or better yet, a computer or a tablet he could hack to accomplish...something. He had no idea what. Taking a deep, calming breath, he poked his head into the room. What he saw nearly made him cry out in shock.

Jensen was fighting with what appeared to be a massive, humanoid robot. Upon further inspection, Pritchard saw that it was a man, augmented from head to toe. All four of his limbs gleamed in the room's sparse light, every surface a gunmetal shade of gray. Even his torso appeared to be replaced, through Pritchard couldn't understand how that was possible. He fought with a ferocity that rivaled Jensen's. So far, Jensen only seemed to be dodging; evidently, he had yet to find a weak spot anywhere on Razor's metallic body.

The room they occupied was bigger than an office. It might have been a conference room, back when the building was still in use. The unusual length of the room gave the two of them plenty of space to fight. As Pritchard stared in awe, Jensen threw a swing at Razor, who dodged out of the way with apparent ease, only to turn around and punch Jensen in the face so hard that he stumbled backward. As Jensen tried to correct himself, Razor threw out one of his hulking arms, sending him flying across the room. Jensen slammed into a wall and landed in a crouch, coughing and clutching his side.

In that moment, Razor turned and looked at Pritchard. He had stared a moment too long.

There was recognition in Razor's face, the only part of him not shielded with metal. Pritchard had never seen Razor's face clearly, but he recognized him nonetheless. Years of seeing his blurry calling-card of an avatar had been seared into Pritchard's memory. In reality, however, his face was nondescript and forgettable. His lip curled into a sinister smile. It was an expression of pure malice, but also looked like it had been practiced in a mirror.

Behind Razor, Jensen had regained his balance. Pritchard watched as Jensen crept up behind an apparently distracted Razor and aimed his arm blade for a killing blow. Without even turning to face him, Razor swung his arm out behind him, elbowing Jensen in the chest. Were the circumstances not so dire, Pritchard would have laughed at Jensen's clumsiness.

"Pritchard!" yelled Jensen, following Razor's gaze. "I told you to get out!"

"Don't count on _him_ to be reliable," said Razor, his voice perfectly cool and even.

Jensen hovered several feet out of Razor's reach, poised to strike again.

Barely knowing what he was doing, Pritchard stepped out from behind the door frame and stood directly in front of Razor.

"I'm here now," said Pritchard, holding his arms out. "What are you going to do about it?"

"God damnit, Pritchard!" said Jensen. "This isn't an action movie!"

"No, no," said Razor, his voice maddeningly calm. "In his head, it is. Everything was always a game to him. Or a child's story."

Pritchard stood his ground, saying nothing but continuing to stare straight at Razor.

Jensen unholstered his pistol, but Razor once again anticipated the move, knocking the gun out of Jensen's hand and catching it.

"Nice augs," said Pritchard. "What, can't rely on your own brainpower to get the job done?"

"I learned a long time ago that cunning and intelligence aren't enough to get by. I think you understand that as well. Working for a _corporation_." He spoke the word like it was poison in his mouth.

"Oh _god_, can you get over that already?" said Pritchard, his annoyance rising despite the fact that a murderous machine-man was standing in front of him.

"No, I can't 'get over it'," said Razor, contempt in his voice. He raised the pistol to aim at Pritchard, his other hand still clenched in a warning fist in Jensen's direction. "You shit all over everything we stood for. We were supposed to be a-"

"Pritchard, catch!"

Pritchard looked up and saw that Jensen had thrown something to him. A flat, black object was spinning through the air like a frisbee. He had a sudden flashback of his high school gym classes, trying and failing to catch balls hurled in his direction. Jensen seemed to anticipate Pritchard's athletic ineptitude, aiming the thrown object straight at his midsection. The object slammed into Pritchard with a surprising amount of force, knocking him backwards onto the floor. He managed to wrap his fingers around it and, looking down, saw that it was a laptop, presumably snatched from the desk while Razor tried to deliver his self-righteous speech.

Pritchard heard the sound of the fight resuming and, thinking fast, tossed the laptop out of the the door's line of sight, rolling along after it.

Sitting up against the wall, Pritchard opened the laptop. Predictably, he was faced with a log-in screen.

He placed his fingers on the keyboard, ready to start hacking his way in. To his surprise, his fingers left bloodstains on the keys. He brought his hand up to his face, trying to see where he had cut his palm. Had he rolled over a shard of glass while he was getting away from the door? He couldn't find any injury, but a shout of pain from Jensen reminded him that he had no time to try to figure it out.

Refocusing on the screen, Pritchard navigated the fortress of Razor's security system. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, its sophistication and complexity enough to stall him for a moment. He felt a small sense of admiration, in spite of himself. But admiration was a feeling he was accustomed to dismissing, and the feeling passed as quickly as it had come.

He penetrated the first layer of security, bringing him to the node capture interface. He frowned at the screen. He could have broken into the system that way, but it was so pedestrian. On the job, he was openly contemptuous of anyone in the tech department who employed such crude methods. Whenever he needed to crack a system's defenses, Pritchard always preferred to go deeper, into the actual programming. It was partly a matter of accuracy and finesse; when done properly, he could hack into a system with a nearly 0% chance of detection. But it was more than that. When he hacked or programmed using code, rather than point-and-click nodes, he was speaking to the machine itself in a perfectly clear language, and it replied in kind. No matter what the circumstances, he couldn't do it any other way.

He scrolled through the lines of code, dissecting Razor's security system and finding vulnerabilities that would have been invisible to anyone but him. Immersed in his work, he began to feel alert yet calm. He barely noticed as Jensen was thrown out into the hallway, slamming into the wall and crumpling onto the floor, only to be dragged back into the room by a pair of gray, metallic arms.

As he worked, his fingers left a worrying amount of blood on the keys. Not wanting to gunk up the keyboard, he wiped his hand on his shirt. When he returned his fingers to the keys, however, they were just as bloody as before.

"Shit!" Pritchard hissed under his breath. He gave his hands another wipe on his shirt, rubbing hard on the fabric to make sure he actually cleaned them this time. When he brought his hands back up to his face, however, they were still wet and dripping. Looking down, he saw that his shirt was saturated in red.

For a moment, he was confused. Hadn't he put on a white shirt yesterday morning?

With a strange detachment, he realized that he must have been shot. That was the reason he had fallen backward when he caught the laptop.

He couldn't feel any pain, but if years of watching action movies had taught him anything, it was that bullet wounds didn't hurt at first. Not until the adrenaline had worn off. He wasn't sure if that was true or not, and he didn't want to think about it. But he felt panic beginning to creep in. His bloody fingers hovered over the keyboard. Just moments before, he had been all but positive that he and Jensen would get out of this alive. But with him in danger of slumping over and dying in the hallway, and Jensen getting his ass kicked in the next room...

Pritchard squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He had been called many things in his life: a loser, a fag, an asshole. But one thing that his old bullies, rivals, and ex-girlfriends had never had cause to call him was a quitter. Whether it was a programming project or full completion of a video game, he never, _ever_ left anything half-finished. The only way a silly thing like a _bullet_ would stop him was if it took away his ability to use his hands properly.

Reopening his eyes, he placed his trembling fingers back onto the keyboard, and immediately hit the wrong key.

"INTRUSION DETECTED - LOCKOUT IMMINENT!" flashed along the top of the screen. Next to it, a 20-second countdown initiated – the very annoyance Pritchard meant to avoid by hacking the old-fashioned way.

He had only one chance to get it right. He saw what he had to do, which parts of the system he needed to break into, but if his finger slipped again, it was over. He took a deep breath, letting a familiar forced calm overtake him. Breathe in, breathe out, _focus_. He closed his eyes, tuning out what sounded like Jensen being killed in the next room, and willed his hands to stop shaking.

He opened his eyes again, with the countdown at 7 seconds. When his fingers hit the keys, they were as stable as the latest Linux release. He raced through the remaining lines of code, exploiting vulnerabilities and avoiding detection with a renewed sense of ease. With just half a second left on the countdown, he gained access.

On the screen, Pritchard saw a graphical interface of Razor's security system. Along the lower half of the screen was a series of video feeds, one of them showing the events of the fight. Razor was holding Jensen off of the ground by his neck. Even through the poor quality of the feed, Pritchard could see that Jensen's face had turned a horrifying shade of red as he tried in vain to free himself from Razor's grip.

He wasn't sure what to do. There didn't appear to be any turrets in the room that he could turn against Razor. According to the interface, there were no security bots anywhere in the building that he could summon. He had spent all this effort, even taking a bullet to hack into this security system, but for what?

Then he saw something. Tucked into a discreet corner of the screen, at the bottom of a list of useless functions, Pritchard saw a button that read, "System shutdown." By his cursory look at the interface, he didn't entirely know what the security system entailed, but he saw no other option. On the video feed, Jensen's arms had begun to go slack, his consciousness fading as his windpipe was slowly being crushed. With no other recourse, Pritchard clicked the button.

At first, nothing happened. Pritchard had expected doors to fly open, or lights to turn off, or something else obvious. He looked to the video feed.

"What the fuck?!" Razor yelled. His arms lowered in a slow but steady motion, releasing Jensen. Next, his knees buckled, sending him backwards into an awkward sitting position on the floor.

Jensen sat where he fell to the ground. He gripped his throat, coughing and gasping, but otherwise looked unhurt. His face had already begun returning to its normal color. "Pritchard!" he said, his voice even raspier than usual, "did you do something?"

Out in the hallway, Pritchard stared at the security interface. A red "DEACTIVATED" warning message blinked on the screen. "I guess I must have," he replied, more to himself than to Jensen.

Jensen came out into the hallway. "Shit," he said, looking at Pritchard.

"I'm fine," said Pritchard. "Just help me up."

"You need to get to a hospital."

"Oh, really? I hadn't noticed that I'm covered in blood until you said something. Just help me up, will you?" Pritchard held out a bloodied hand.

"You sure you can stand?" said Jensen, his eyebrows creased.

"Damnit, Jensen, I'm fine. I think it's just my shoulder. Stop treating me like I'm a weakling."

Without another word, Jensen held out a hand and helped Pritchard to his feet.

As soon as he stood up, Pritchard doubled over, the pain in his shoulder hitting him. He ground his teeth and and grunted, but righted himself after several moments. He looked over at Jensen, who was frowning at him.

"What happened to him?" asked Pritchard, indicating the room were Razor sat slumped over.

"No idea," said Jensen. "Ask him yourself."

Pritchard walked into the room, not as quickly as he would have liked. Razor was conscious, but looked catatonic, his eyes staring at the floor in front of him. His limbs lay motionless at his sides. "Nothing to say?" said Pritchard, the pain in his shoulder dampening his attempt at snark.

Razor looked up, an expression of furious disappointment on his face. Despite his immobility, he didn't appear to be hurt. He looked like he wanted nothing more than to stand back up and break Pritchard in half with his robotic hands. Instead, he spat at Pritchard's feet.

Pritchard opened his mouth to continue taunting, but a stab of pain reminded him that he probably ought to relax.

"I'm going to call you an ambulance," said Jensen.

"No," said Pritchard, looking at Jensen. "Not yet. Take care of him first."

"Are you sure?"

"'Tis but a scratch,'" said Pritchard, giving a weak chuckle and then grimacing in pain. "What are you going to do about him?"

"I'm going to call some of my people in the security department," said Jensen. "I know it's risky, but if there are any more plants, I'll be ready for them." He eyed Pritchard, covered in blood and beginning to tremble. "You better sit down."

"I'm fine," said Pritchard, waving a bloodied hand. "I'm not going to pass out or anything."

Jensen looked skeptical, but said nothing.

"This isn't over," said Razor.

Pritchard and Jensen looked at the slumped figure on the floor.

"You can't hide behind your attack dog forever, you miserable piece of shit," Razor continued. He glared at Pritchard, a murderous gleam in his eyes. "You'll let your guard down again. That's what happens when you get compla-"

"Yes, yes, I'm complacent with my corporate job and it'll be the death of me and everything I love," said Pritchard, rolling his eyes. "Are you finished?"

Razor glared, but said no more.

"Now if you don't mind," said Pritchard, looking at Jensen, "I think I'll go wait outside."

He walked into the hallway. Exhaustion began to overtake him, more quickly than he thought possible. He found a spot on the floor, away from the deserted laptop and bloodstains, and eased himself into a sitting position. He heard Jensen making a call on his infolink, his sentinel health system having already restored his voice to its normal level of gruffness. He leaned his head back on the wall and, without meaning to, drifted off to sleep within seconds.

* * *

Two days later, Pritchard sat in his office, working at his computer as usual. On his desk was a small collection of get well cards, as well as a miniature potted cactus from Faridah. His shoulder, bandaged and healing, still hurt him, but he refused to take any painkillers, lest his mind to become too foggy to focus on his work.

He looked up as Jensen walked in.

"About time," said Pritchard, testily. "I summoned you twenty minutes ago."

"I'm sorry, Francis. But considering that you weren't in a life-or-death situation this time, I figured it would be smarter _not_ to walk out midway through a meeting with Mr. Sarif."

"I see," said Pritchard. "Well, now that you're here, I'd like to go over my findings with you regarding Razor."

"Alright." Jensen sat down in a chair facing Pritchard's desk.

"As you know, immediately after his apprehension by your team, Razor was taken to a highly-secured holding cell here in the building, where our scientists could study him. I wasn't aware that such a place existed, but it's been helpful. As you can imagine, Razor has proved less than cooperative."

"Well, no shit," said Jensen, frowning. "How would you like to be studied by scientists without being asked whether or not you like it?"

Pritchard raised an eyebrow.

"Nevermind. Go on."

"Anyway," Pritchard continued, "what our scientists discovered was truly fascinating. Razor is not augmented, as we initially supposed. Rather, he was wearing a highly advanced set of mechanized armor, most likely of his own design, which was programmed to do his fighting for him. That's why he was able to beat you so easily. The armor's software anticipated your every move, and reacted accordingly."

"So that's why he keeled over the moment you shut him down," said Jensen.

"Precisely. Without the armor's power, he wasn't even able to lift his own limbs. The armor turned him into a fighter, but without it, he's just an ordinary man."

"So are we going to be able to turn him in soon? Or are the scientists still busy jabbing him with needles?"

"Oh, they're finished. They tell me he'll be cleared for transfer to the authorities later today. The armor is being studied, and it's likely that we'll be able to use what we learn from it for our own purposes. If Mr. Sarif is still angry about this whole mess, he'll at least be pleased about _that_."

Jensen leaned back, looking at Pritchard with an odd expression. "I'm curious," he said. "How come you've never gotten any augmentations?"

Pritchard paused, taken aback by the question "I have several cranial augmentations," he said, after a moment. "None of which are required for me to do my job, of course."

"No, I mean bodily ones. I hate to say it, but you've got a hell of a brain. If you combined that with an augmented limb or two, you could have some serious power. You might not have even needed my help the other night."

Pritchard frowned slightly. "Well...I won't say I haven't considered it. It would certainly make some aspects of my life easier. But I've decided that I'm simply not interested in augmentations of that type."

"Why's that?"

"Look. I know that brain and brawn aren't mutually exclusive, but there's a reason they tend not to co-exist in the same person. A strong body can lead one to more physical solutions – something I learned from being at the wrong end of too many fists while growing up. I, on the other had, choose not to deal with my problems by punching them in the face. There are remarkably few situations that can't be resolved with a bit of critical thinking."

"Hmm. I think I see what you're saying. You're worried that physical strength might lead to mental weakness."

"That's the dumbed down version of what I just said, yes."

"But physical augs would have come in handy the other night."

"Undoubtedly. But, as you saw, I managed to get out of it just fine using only my mental faculties."

"Only after you called _me_ for help."

"And in that particular situation, I deemed it smartest to ask for your help. Unlike you, I've never made it my goal to be a one-man army. I'm not above requesting assistance if the situation warrants it."

"That's very...idealistic of you, Francis."

Pritchard shrugged. "I'm not the naïve fool I once was. But I still have my principles, and I try to live by them. If abiding by one of my beliefs means that I have to ask for help once in awhile, so be it. And I could certainly do worse than the people here at Sarif Industries."

"So you _do_ care about us," said Jensen, a sarcastic smile on his face.

Pritchard glared at him. "I'm not being sentimental. It's a conclusion I came to after rational thought." He paused for a moment, looking awkward. "Uh, I did want to thank you, though. For coming to my aid."

"Don't mention it. You've always helped _me_."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"So, what's going to happen to Razor?" said Pritchard eventually. "From a judicial standpoint, that is."

"Hard to say," said Jensen. "He'll definitely get a long sentence, but if one of our competitors takes notice of him, they may try to get him sprung early. Like what happened with you."

"It's _not_ like what happened with me," said Pritchard, jabbing a finger in Jensen's direction. "I never tried to kill anyone."

"Alright," said Jensen, raising a placating hand. "But my point stands. If someone with money wants him free, he'll be freed. Sooner than either of us may think."

"I figured as much." Pritchard sighed heavily. "Well, I'd better get back to work then. I need to finish upgrading the new security protocols if I want to survive another round with him."

"Don't worry. If he comes back, we'll be ready."

"I'll be able to concentrate more without you paraphrasing everything I say, Jensen. Now if you don't mind, I really ought to get back to work."

Jensen stood up, chuckling. "Good to see you're back to normal."

Pritchard took a moment to watch Jensen leave, then turned back to his work.


End file.
